


The Lights of Stars and The Glitter in Your Eyes

by blueboxchick



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Hulk Sex, I'm Sorry, Lots of Hulk Sex, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2020-03-02 14:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18813088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueboxchick/pseuds/blueboxchick
Summary: It took the Statesman three months to get back to Earth, and much, much less for Thor to fall in love with Bruce.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi I wanna thank my beta @get-lostsquidward on tumblr. They are wonderful!

Monogamy, in Thor’s experience, is a complicated term, and something he had often failed to comprehend. 

Jane had explained it to him, in great detail through gritted teeth and fiery eyes, when he had told her of how greatly her and Sif differed in styles of love making. Which is not to say Thor felt he came closer to grasping the definition.

Asgardians, on the whole, didn’t follow the single lover track of life. When their lifespans run in the high 4000s, it was near impossible, and Thor believed he should not be judged for the simple fact of his biology. Polyamory was a fact of his heredity.

Though, Thor’s relationship status might not have _technically_ been polyamorous. He wasn’t sure how to classify sleeping with very large, green person on a semi-regular basis, while also having a mild, no-big deal (well actually, very big deal, like seriously, it was kind of all he thought about) crush on another less large and very jittery person. Also, those people, in some manners of speaking, could be considered the same person.

Thor had been the one to suggest the rooming set-up. Sharing rooms was inevitable, even on the Statesman, when they were carrying the whole of Asgard’s peoples and a handful of rebels. And Bruce needed a roommate, one he knew.

Their room was Thor’s favorite on the ship. A captain’s room, with all possible technological advances, high, gold and purple painted walls, a Sakaar king sized bed covered with silk sheets, and a bay window that stretched from ceiling to floor.

He could see the entirety of Asgard through that window as they floated away from it. Nothing more than a burning orb of lost legacies and confused, muddled memories. His father, Hela, his mother, his mother’s passing, the brutality, the bloodshed. He had to force his eye closed, but he forced it back open right after. Thor had to say goodbye to this, his first, and only ever true home. It’s why he had retreated so quick from the hull, for this glimpse, a moment of reverent, mournful silence. He let his head slump against the glass panel, but it rose again as a tremble passed through the floor.

“Thor sad?” a thundering voice asked. Thor turned, seeing Hulk, who was battle scarred and jagged edged. Thor shook his head and made a smile stretch across his face.

“No, friend, of course not. We have been victorious.”

“No,” Hulk said as he lumbered to the window. He shoved a finger against it, pointing to the flaming mass of desecration Thor couldn’t look away from, “that make Thor sad. Home gone.”

The word ‘gone’ hit Thor in the chest and he took in a breath and held it not to let a tear fall. He smelled the fields that housed his childhood and watched his first battleground smoulder away. 

“I-I’m fine, Hulk.” Thor composed himself, shifting shoulders up and widening out his chest. He went to turn around, fabricating an excuse for urgent kingly manners, but Hulk grabbed him before he could.

Thor readied for a fight, his left hand tingling with excess spark, but, wait, no, this was an embrace. This was two green and rough arms around his back and his face pressed into a massive chest. This was the goliath in front of him sighing as he patted a palm cross Thor’s armored rib cage. Thor had to take pause.

“Hulk, uh-”

“Shh, Hulk help his sad, tiny friend.”

“Tiny? You do not-” But his words were muffled by the crushing weight of Hulk’s arm bringing him in. He tightened up but then relaxed into the firmness of it, shoulders slinking down and neck giving in to the heaviness of his head. Hulk leaned himself back against the window, Thor going with him, and they studied the twinkling vastness of space. Asgard was becoming little more than a blip in it. Thor took a hefty inhale and blinked away the little bit of mist that was sneaking in at the corners of his vision. The words  _ home gone _ lit up in his mind once more and his chest felt like it was being pulled taut against his lungs.  _ Home Gone _ , gone forever. Thor sucked in his lips, nudging forward against Hulk’s arm. Hulk loosened his grip and Thor slipped out. 

“Thank you,” Thor said, nodding to himself. He gave a look to Hulk in some sort of attempt to read the status of this interaction, but once he brought his eyes over to the big guy, he was scanning Thor’s body like he was his next meal. Thor took another step into the room, away from Hulk, because while he was mostly sure Hulk had never eaten anyone, he would not like to be the first.

“Hulk help?” 

“Yeah, buddy,” Thor paused, looking behind his shoulder for a moment. The look was still there, “you did.” 

“Thor is pretty god.”

Thor’s eyes went wide for a moment and a chuckle burst out of him from low in his stomach. His hand shot up to brush back his sweaty hair and then down to his chin, scratching through the gruff pricks of stubble. He fought between a smile (he was proud that even after a long battle and on the brink of the tears, he could still, well, get it) and horror. 

“Hey, uh,” Thor turned, and the laugh burst out again, though this time meeting a yelp. Hulk. Naked. Hulk was naked, and, okay, yeah, that was his penis, “Woah, now, let’s-”

“Hulk and Thor have sex. Hulk help Thor.” Hulk took a lumbering step to Thor, too close. Close enough that Thor could feel the huffs of air out of his nostrils and see the sweat clinging in the curls of his chest hair. And close enough to let his palm fall on Thor’s back. Thor jittered back, but the hand didn’t move

“Woah, okay, I-sun’s getting real low, sun’s going, ah!” Thor screeched as Hulk hoisted him up, dirty fingers tight on around his waist. Thor’s hands pushed out to shove against the wide barrelled chest at his eye line, but, disobeying any understanding Thor had of himself, his own member began to twitch in his pants. He stilled to a complete freeze, and Hulk lowered him down.

“Thor?” 

Thor could not, looking back on it, ever explain the events that transpired that night. His head was cloudy to begin with, before being confronted directly by a giant, green schlong. Grief, anger, aching bones and blood-clotted cuts, overwhelmingly thick fatigue. He had a fried brain, one in need of touch and numbing, somehow simultaneously. But, even with that, Thor honestly lacked an explanation for himself. 

The movements slipped into each other as Thor conducted them in his amped rush. Bounding down the room, then to metal door to slam a button and close it-them-up away from view, and then, falling over his feet on his way over to Hulk as armor and pants and chain mail and arm straps tumbled off. 

Hulk hefted Thor up as they made contact and Thor’s legs strapped around the girth of Hulk’s waist firm enough to hold himself up. 

Hulk was kissing him, which, Thor admitted, was tripping him up a bit. He hadn’t expected them to kiss, as going into the experience, their course to the bed felt too animalistic to be anywhere near romantic. But this kiss was passion and careful shifts against Thor’s face. Thor, for once in his entire history, felt like he was the one who was being guided, like he was in the back seat and giving the fate of his lips over to the control of a trusted friend. 

Hulk took them over to the bed and lowered Thor onto it with soft hands, calloused palms pressing across a naked, bruised chest. Thor winced as Hulk pulled a knee up onto the bed, sure that the frame would break, but nothing fell apart. He should have known, with this being the Grandmaster’s ship, especially in the captain’s room, that this bed could handle whatever they were going to throw at it.

“Wait,” Thor said, pushing up on his elbows. Hulk slumped back, knee pulling with him. Thor wasn’t sure why he had paused them, other than the fact that his hard, pulsing cock was just pushed against Hulk’s leg and that was the craziest situation of events he could have ever thought up, “I, uh, who is . . .? Who will be, eh, conquering who?”

Thor’s forehead scrunched as he finished speaking, mincing words poorly, but Hulk just laughed, or his approximation of a laugh which was more like bellowing the word ‘ha’ repeatedly. 

“Hulk conquer Thor.”

Thor nodded, then nodded again, then, wait, he needed to prepare for this. He hopped up, getting a grunt from Hulk, and searched the drawers. There had to be something, alien or otherwise, they could use to help. Thor couldn’t do  _ that _ , not without something. Finally, on the third one he flung open, he found a tub of unmarked gel that he tossed at a waiting Hulk. 

“Use that, uh-please?” Thor felt ridiculous begging. He was out of his mind, dick twitching every time he thought about that massive body in front of him. Just from a few kisses and heavy hands grazed across his nipples and a touch or two on his cock, he was jittering to get Hulk on him, in him, anything. 

Hulk smirked and his cracked lips parted to reveal jagged teeth. His hands came down to frame Thor’s head and his knees tightened around the edges of Thor’s hips.

“Pretty, pretty god,” Hulk repeated. Thor grinned as he breathed in the air that was Hulk, twitching up his ass as some sort of offering. Hulk took it, flipping Thor onto his stomach. Thor groaned into the oddly shimmery fabric of the sheets. 

A sound came out of him when Hulk’s weight landed on top of him that he hadn’t heard himself make in a long time, a squeal that was nearly disconnected from his own being. He felt in that moment equally stronger than ever before for taking on this task, for being a god because this was a god’s act, to take on the greatness of this task, yet also somehow the smallest he had ever been.

Rough hands smeared with that gel pushed at his ass open and Thor shivered as the very edge of something tingled at his entrance. 

Then it was going in. And then, fuck,  _ faen _ , Hulk was in him. Thor’s eyes slammed shut, and he might just have transcended reality.

Thor woke the next morning aching in all parts of himself, sex and battle becoming synonymous in their effects on him. He pulled the sheets up under his chin and groaned a bit too loud, the body next him to mumbling some lost words into a pillow and shifting over.

It was not Hulk anymore who lay next to Thor. It was Bruce, curled in on himself and making angry faces in his dreams, with his gray twists of hair and very naked body. Seeing him in this form made Thor’s heartbeat ramp up and he started to pull himself off the bed because, unlike last night, the bed felt like it had become very much Bruce’s space, not his. He probably shouldn’t be there when Bruce woke up. 

Thor left the bed, left Bruce tucked up under the covers and the lights off, and found a shower in the bathroom connected to the room.

He hadn’t showered after yesterday, after lighting himself aflame with electricity and raging through a siege of undead. He stunk, badly, from sex and war and strife and loss and, well, everything that happened to make him feel pummeled and smell like the inside of someone’s boot.

Under the water of the shower-which Thor didn’t trust because the stream was glowing purple and blue and the floor was this weird translucent glass that he felt he was going to fall through-lines of brown and red sludge dripped off him. Watching the muck get sucked down the drain, Thor mourned again. The dirt was Asgard once, its soil and crops and growth, and even his blood and Hela’s belonged to that ancient place. His hand touched over the edge of the gaping wound where his eye used to be. It stung and he wrenched his hand down.

When he toweled off, Thor was grateful to be clean. It made the weariness in his bones lessen the smallest bit and he supposed he looked more ‘kingly’ now, with a fresh face and combed hair. He put his eye patch back on and walked back into the bedroom with the towel wrapped at his waist.

“Thor?” a gentle voice asked. Bruce was sat up against pillows with his hands gripping the sheet tight around his waist, “Where are we?”

“The Statesman. We’ve been on board since we left Asgard yesterday.” Thor put on his smile carefully, as if too much of a smirk or too wide a glint of teeth could cause Bruce to crumble into pieces. Bruce always looked ridiculously fragile after he came back to himself. 

Bruce nodded and his gaze drifted to the window and the endless stretch of stars and systems that lay beyond. Thor thought he might have caught a slight smile. He grinned earnestly. Space, especially for a newcomer, is a wonder.

“Asgard, yeah. What happened? Did we win? I assume we did, because we’re here, but . . .” Bruce asked, turning back to Thor as the skin around his eyes crinkled into worry. Thor’s smile fell.

“Asgard is gone. So is Hela. But, luckily, my people are safe.”

“Oh, Thor, man, I’m sorry,” Bruce’s shoulders slumped and his head tilted down. Pity, Thor thought. He looked away, “You wanna talk about it? I’ve heard I’m a good listener.”

Thor shook his head, shook off wherever his mind was going to with the trigger of yesterday. 

“No matter. Breakfast? There was talk of possibly opening a meal hall in one of the ships kitchen’s.” 

Bruce shifted against the bed, lips scrunching up.

“Uh, well, I-I’m naked right now, so maybe we can find some clothes first? Big guy tends not to leave me any.”

Thor felt small twitch of memory of last night in his cock. He bounced on his heels and twisted the towel around his waist and his arousal faded. Still, it was enough to know his body wanted more. He chuckled it off.

“Yes, of course, let’s get you clothed, Banner,” Thor pushed, formality a cover. Bruce noticed.

“Bruce, please, Thor,” he corrected, and Thor gave him a sheepish grin.

Thor couldn’t find much in the way of anything resembling Midgardian clothing in his search. There was no reason for it on a Sakaarian ship, but creeping guilt still dripped down into his stomach at the way Bruce’s mouth fell when he saw the leather turtleneck and billowing burgundy pants Thor offered him. Begrudgingly, Bruce put them on in the bathroom. 

“I had fun last night,” Thor said as he watched Bruce examine the outfit in a mirror. Thor was surprised Bruce hadn’t mentioned it last night yet, or even seemed like he was trying to dance around the issue. For Banner, this was unsettling levels of cavalier. Bruce’s brow squeezed up and he caught Thor’s eye in the reflection.

“Uh, had fun killing your sister?” 

“No,” Thor’s heart was rocketing again and he might have actually been embarrassed, “no, I. Fun with, well, you and I.”

Bruce sighed and Thor began to feel like he was about to reprimanded for his illogical behavior. But Bruce just pursed his lips.

“You know I don’t remember whatever Hulk does, right? He didn’t, like, beat you up, did he? Sorry,” Bruce explained.

“No. Hulk can’t beat me up. I’m good,” Thor said, too quick, maybe disappointed, maybe relieved. Bruce laughed and smiled down at his palms.

“Okay,” Bruce said, shaking his head, “What did you two do?” 

Thor went red.

“Stargazing.”

“Oh.” Bruce’s eyebrows lifted up and Thor stared at his feet as small, light brown eyes scanned him.

“Yes,” Thor said, with his convincing tone, or his best attempt, “Hulk actually loves the stars. You didn’t know that?” 

“So do I,” Bruce added, then taking in a big breath, he stepped to the window. They were passing a mostly empty galaxy, and outside was quiet, “I guess he and I finally agree. Wouldn’t have guessed stars, but okay.”

“He loves them. Just couldn’t get enough,” Thor interjected, pointlessly, words babbling out of his bubbly pit.

Bruce gave him a soft smile, and that was nice, though, and they left for breakfast.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In order to pay honor to MY god of lesbians, this was written listening mostly to Tegan and Sara. 
> 
> Also lemme know if y'all want my GammaHammer spotify playlist, I'll post it with the next chp. 
> 
> Please excuse any errors, this is un-betaed since I was just so excited to publish another chapter!

The sight of the mess hall, which was filled to the brim with Asgardians, was heartening for Thor to see. There was a bustle of noise passing through the room, bits of conversations that mingled into one sound that washed over him. The corners of his lips stretched out wide.

“These, Bruce, are my people!” he said, his arm waving out across the room. Bruce looked up at Thor through half-lidded eyes. He was tired but more himself now, right-leaning smiles and soft wrinkles in his cheeks abound. 

“They’re great,” Bruce patted Thor’s arm and Thor felt a light tingle rush the spot, “I’m gonna find myself some food, okay?”

Bruce made his way to the start of the food line. They had been able to use a combination of the food stored on the ship and what they had managed to get while rushing off their planet to make an approximation of Asgardian dishes. It was close enough, Thor hoped, to what Bruce ate normally. Thor was finding that since their time on Sakaar, he had developed a compulsive need to keep Bruce from having a freak out, maybe out of some lingering guilt for asking for the Hulk over Banner, maybe a naturally ingrained sympathy for someone who needed it so much as Bruce. 

“Hey, Thor. Me and Meek were just looking for you, buddy.” Korg and Meek were in front of him suddenly and Thor took his eyes off Bruce. Meek issued a squeak of a hello and waved a blade at him. Thor took one pace back. 

“I’m doing well, large worm, thank you,” Thor said to Meek with a nod. He caught a glint of black and the sheen of leather, and began to change course, “We will continue this later.” 

“Okay. Let’s talk soon. We’ve got some big, uh, military ideas for you Asgardians, alright?” 

Thor halted himself. Political strategy had been absent from his head for a long time, dispelled with trips through the galaxy and banged out through raging battles with monsters and fire demons and trolls. He hadn’t considered needing it again for a long time, hoping for centuries more of Odin’s rule. He never had understood those who  _ chose _ politics.

“Can’t wait!” Thor says as he pushed out an over the top grin. Korg gave him a thumbs up and Thor turned away as he suppressed a wince.

“Those fools,” Loki muttered under his breath once Thor had settled into the bench seating, “from the Grandmaster’s trash pile approached me wanting to work on the defense council. That is ridiculous, and I hope you will not be allowing it.” 

“They are not fools. Korg is a friend. And, as for the council. . .” Thor trailed off, and then diverted, quick, “By the way, were you and the Grandmaster, like, a . . . ?”  

Loki looked down and pushed at the food on his plate. His lips shifted against each other.

“I did what I needed to do to move up the ranks. The Grandmaster had very specific requirements for those ranks.”

Thor smiled to himself, which faded into slight horror as his head formed an image of Loki and the Grandmaster together. He was developing a taunt for Loki to expel the idea from his mind as Loki spoke again.

“Do you think it’s very wise to have  _ him _ on the ship with us?” Loki asked and Thor tracked his eyeline. It was focused on Bruce.

“Banner? Um, yes? Is that a trick question, brother?”

“I’m not so worried about the doctor. It’s the beast part that I’m concerned about.” Loki was still staring at Bruce and Thor swore he saw the small wisps of fear passing under his eyes. Thor let a hint of a smirk loose. He looked at Bruce again, who was half way through the food line and talking to Valkyrie over the meats section. His shirt was dwarfing him, Thor had overestimated the size, and he didn’t believe it was possible to fear any part of this curly haired, droopy eyed man. 

“He won’t be a problem,” Thor grinned at Loki. 

“I just . . . I’m not sure about all these foreigners with us. Humans, rock-things, all of them,” Loki grumbled into his palm. 

“Well, you are, in a loose definition of the word, a ‘foreigner’ as well,” Thor added, but regretted it as soon as he saw Loki’s eyes narrow into disquieted, aghast slits and the side of his mouth flatten out against his face, “Sorry, you are . . . I didn’t mean . . . you’re my brother, Loki, and an Asgardian, of course, and I-” 

Thor was thankful to be cut off from his ramblings by Bruce’s arrival with a hefty plate that fell heavy against the table. 

“Uh, hey there, Loki,” Bruce said, voice half there. The two eyed each other back and forth, a conversation of mutual fright and distrust, before Loki stood up, turned, his greasy hair tossing with him, and was running off. Bruce looked to Thor with puffed out cheeks. 

“Jeez, I didn’t mean to . . .”

Thor shook his head at Bruce’s words, giving him a light smile, then looked over his plate, which was coming over its edges with food. Bruce blushed and released a laugh from high in his lungs, one of his main repertoire of laughs. This one always made Thor laugh too, in a short burst that he just couldn’t keep in. 

“I . . . after I go all Hulk-y and stuff, I’m really hungry, alright?”

Thor nodded, smirking, and small breeze of a chuckle passed out of his lips. Bruce responded back with a push of a laugh. The laughing started to feel like a conversation, a puff of something around Bruce’s bite of ambiguous meat, a groan of a giggle as Thor dipped his fork into the pile of Bruce’s food. 

“A warrior’s meal,” Thor said, eyes on Bruce, after they had devoured the plate as a team. Bruce shrugged, but he was smiling. 

Bruce went back to the room after their monumental meal, and as much as Thor would have liked to as well, he got caught in a mix of questions by his citizens the second he stood.

Hemidhall pulled him from the swarm of mothers asking about education and beefy men and women wanting to reestablish the warrior force. Thor was glad for the rescue, but only briefly, for he was less than happy when Hemidhall spoke.

“Tomorrow morning, early, meeting with the councils of defense and diplomacy. We need to get a handle on this before we land.”

Thor agreed, against his heart and his happiness, on the meeting, and snuck out the side of the hall to his room.

When he entered, Bruce was standing in front of the bed with three holographic, torso-sized screens spread out around him.

“The ship-it has, like, Earth internet! Like academic databases and stuff! I think it might have non-Earth internet, too, or the equivalent of internet, I guess.”

Thor came up behind Bruce. The screen glow shrouded them both of a blanket of light.

“Show me,” Thor said, his voice restrained as the idea of council meetings fuzzed out his focus. Bruce enacted some flicks of his fingers and one screen showed a page titled  _ The Five Greatest Mysteries of Antimatter _ . 

“I was actually writing a paper on this before I was the big guy for, ah, two years, so I’d thought I’d pick it up again. I don’t really remember what my thesis was, but, uh, I’m trying.” Bruce tried to focus back on the screen, his eyes going into tight slits as he pressed a bit closer to it. 

“Are your eyes alright, Bruce?” Thor asked.

“Uh, yeah, I just don’t have my glasses.” 

“I’ll get you some.” Thor had no idea how he would get glasses on this ship if he couldn’t manage Midgardian clothes, but the authority of telling Bruce he would was a boost to his ego he needed to have. Bruce mumbled an ‘m’kay thanks’ and turned back to his screen. Thor took the hint and started on his way to the bed, catching himself in the mirror.

Loki was correct, Thor looked exactly like a young shadow of father. A shadow, though, who had failed to leech off any of its owner’s wisdom. He furrowed his brow and brought his palm up to cover the patch. He sighed and dropped the palm, falling heavy onto the bed. 

They were silent for a while, outside of Bruce muttering things to himself in excited hushes, and Thor fell into the vacuum of his head. 

It felt like it had last time, his return to Asgard after Ultron when Odin had once again offered him the throne. He had ran then, and he wanted to run again, one more time, just deny a bit longer so he can soul search and wander and sleep around and be unplaced. Thor had never been particularly interested in the ‘king’ title once he had delved into what it entailed. ‘Prince’ was nice, it was royal, but vague on the responsibility, freedom and respect in a balance that fit his sensibilities. ‘King’ was too heavy on his shoulders, like a cloak he could never remove, cursed by heredity. 

Thor sighed rougher than he had meant to and Bruce turned to him. 

“Thor?”

Thor snapped back to the voices that existed outside of his head, “Huh?”

“You doing alright over there?” Bruce asked, stepping to the bed. Thor jolted up and fixed his spine to a ridgid straight line. He snapped his face into something neutral.

“Yep,” he said through tight lips. The bed dipped behind him and he turned to see Bruce next to him. 

“You sure?”

Thor paused, then huffed and tossed his legs back up on to bed. Bruce echoed him and then they were close enough to touch shoulders, a head on each of the two pillows and four feet at the foot of the bed.

“I have a meeting with my councils tomorrow. As king.”

“That’s cool,” Bruce offered but Thor shook his head at the suggestion, “Oh.”

“I don’t know what I’ll say. They will have questions about our ‘future’ as a people and Earth’s systems, surely, and-and what am I supposed to say to that?” Thor said in a long chain, a release. He glanced over at Bruce, who was taking the wave of it with a smile.

“Well, what are your policies? Education? Defense?” Bruce was leaning into Thor, and Thor felt a warmth sprinkle across his cheeks. He turned his face down.

“Uh, teach good people, punch bad people?” Bruce gave him a wide-eyed look, on the brink of either a laugh or gasp, “One of your Peee-H-Dees isn’t in Asgardian government, is it?”

“Can’t say Penn State offers that one,” Bruce laughed lightly. Thor slammed a fist onto the bed, head swimming.

“Damn politics!” The words bellowed out of him, bursting tension that had been too compressed, and he felt a shift next to him. Bruce was pulling a knee up to his chest, face tucked behind it. Thor winced, “Sorry, I, Bruce-”

“Fine, it’s fine,” Bruce tossed his hands up about himself as his knee lowered. Thor’s shoulders slumped, “I can look some stuff up, if you’re, ah, that upset about it.”

“I’d thought I’d have longer, that Odin would be around longer, and I wouldn’t have to . . .”

Thor’s heart thump-thumped against his ribs as Odin, oppressive and all-knowing, took over his head. Odin the fighter, Odin the stoic, Odin the bold, Odin the gone. 

“We can talk about your dad, if you want?” Bruce said. Thor had to think. Odin wasn’t ‘dad’, he was father, allfather, king. He tried to think about Odin in that context, ‘dad’, which felt foreign and dissociated to what his childhood had been.

“Father was a very good king. Powerful warrior, good with policy, good with the people, and . . .” Thor halted. There was something pushing at the front of his mouth, desperately, something fighting to be voiced. He realized, quite abruptly, what he meant to say, “and, he taught Loki and I none of this. He was this cold, confusing man, because everything was for the kingdom. Kingdom this, kingdom that! It was ridiculous. To him, we were the issue of my mother, and my mother, she was . . .”

Thor could see Frigga exactly in his mind’s eye. He felt the blonde curls she had been kind enough to pass down to him as they rested upon his shoulders. She was with him at all times, she had kissed his head before every battle, escorted him to every diplomatic dinner and grand ball. When he thought of Asgard, rather than the people or the place or the palace, it was her he saw. He wanted to cry, but blinked that away with more anger.

“My mother was a perfect woman, and I want so, so much to thank her, every day, but-but she did that without help. Father never helped. He was busy, with meetings, and that fucking, damned Odinsleep. He gave up us for Asgard, but I-I can’t! I won’t do that, I can’t be that king, I-I . . .”

Thor’s supply of bitter fuel died out and his words went with it. He was sure he must look spent after that, haggard deep in his soul after such a centuries old cleansing of thought. He whipped his head over his shoulder to check on Bruce. Thor found him with his head dipped down to the sheets, hands picking up clutches of it. Thor paled. 

Thor had ruined it. He had scared off his only real Midgardian friend. He was a raging, screaming, rambling God that had terrified this fragile mortal. Thor scrambled on his feet for some grand apology, but stopped when Bruce lifted his head up.

“You-you don’t have to be your dad, okay? To rule, you don’t have to be him,” Bruce said, up on his feet by the end and coming closer to Thor. All Thor could do was nod as the silent, shaky force approached him.

“You’re gonna be a different a different king than Odin. My dad w-was awful, really awful, and I-I’m not him, right? I’m not awful, right? So you don’t have to be your dad,” Bruce barreled. Thor and him were staring at each other, brown burrowing into Thor’s blue with all its might. Then, Bruce faltered, and Thor was lost, “Sorry, I-this was about Odin and, ah, politics and Asgard. I made it about me again, didn’t I?”

Thor ducked in towards Bruce and placed a hand on his shoulder, quick to counter that. 

“No! No, no, no, my friend,” Thor rushed.

“My dad-he . . . he did some really bad things,” Bruce whispered. Thor didn’t press past that. He knew he shouldn’t, not then. He was surging with an overpowering need to shelter Bruce from this, and his instincts told him that shutting up and letting Bruce say what he wanted to, if he wanted to, was the way to do that.

Thor felt something in his hand and glanced down to find Bruce’s palm in his own. Thor shared a quick exchange with Bruce, whom was equally shocked by the development, they both countered back and their hands were wrenched apart. They both laughed once they are seperated, like a balancer to their biting anger, and jumped to speak. 

“I have research that-”

“I should go check on-”

Thor cut off first, smiling and giving Bruce a small nod, and head for the door. He didn’t know where he was going to go, but he did know he needed to keep Bruce to see just how much he was blushing. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay y'all here's the spotify playlist. It is my jam, seriously: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/33fFZZf5GuCb5iKylbEL1V 
> 
> Songs that I listened to while writing this, in no particular order: I Do Adore, Let's Hear it for the Boy, Yellow, Daddy Issues, and Anything for You
> 
> Enjoy!

The meetings, which consisted of councils that were becoming increasingly blurred in Thor’s head and streams of words like ‘judiciary system’ and ‘delegation of power’ pounding at him, had become thrice weekly, always in the morning, always packed.

“I’d like to put my name in for consideration,” Valkyrie said with enough force to rouse Thor’s chin up from slumping on his hand. He hadn’t slept well-consistently hadn’t been sleeping well, whether that be Bruce sharing a bed with him or his political strife was undetermined-and had only been half a part of the conversation so far. He scanned the room and its holographic boards to catch up. Leader of the warrior force, Thor deduced.

“Uh, I, me too, for that. Yeah,” Korg followed. Valkyrie shot him a look, but Korg didn’t seem to notice. The groups of people that made up the councils and parliamentary members present in the room were generally displeased by both nominations, not that they really could do much about it. In the end, Thor would make the choice. On every council leader and major edict of society, it was him who would make the call, which was a boost to his ego while also terrifying as all hell.

Valkyrie eyed him carefully, and Thor knew just from the shift of her lip that she was deciding her odds. She deserved the title, more qualified than anyone in the room, excluding himself, maybe, despite what the rest of the assembly thought of it, thought of her time away from Asgard. Thor would try to find Korg some position, though, fabricate a title if he needed to.

“I’ll see those of you on defense again three days from now. Education and Agriculture, tomorrow morning,” Heimdall ordered. He had alleviated Thor of the duty of running these things, and Thor was more than grateful. They disbanded in a shuffle of mumbles and Thor dredged himself up to stand.

“Hey,” Valkyrie said as she shoved her elbow against Thor’s bicep. He shoved back at her with a grin.

“Trying to take up the old mantle, huh?”

“Yeah,” Valkyrie eased slowly, a prick of something being held back and shift of her shoulders, prepping for a fight, “so?”

“No, no, it’s good! I’m like, yay, Val, you go girl!” Thor covered quick, gesturing a non committal fist bump and Valkyrie took it with a side-arching smirk and roll of her eyes.

“Okay, then.”

“Just don’t let the, well, the others worry you, alright? You’re suited for this.” Thor hoped this was enough for her to understand his leanings, as much of a hint he felt he could reasonably give. Valkyrie’s eyes went wide and her lips formed a flat smile. It warmed Thor a little, to issue something with some effectiveness, some net good.

Loki passed them and they both called after him. He halted with a huff.

“Yes?” he hissed at them both.

“So, what, no bid for power?” Valkyrie snarked back.

“I was expecting at least some sort of coup attempt or something,” Thor added, his glance catching on Loki, who was not exactly mad, maybe closer to a flat discomfort.

“No, not this time. Not me.”

It dawned on Thor how quiet Loki had been in the past two weeks of meetings. No bursts of anger, no snips at parliament, no desperate sieges on Thor himself. It was almost like Loki was actually exhibiting restraint, or possibly embarrassment, maybe some sheepishness to act around a people who would never trust him, but past experience made Thor doubtful of any of those.

“Well,” Thor sighed, feeling some mix of awkward tension and familial sympathy. He shifted on his feet and looked away from the lines of Loki’s unreadable but undeniably dreary eyes, “I think I’m going to find Bruce now.”

Loki and Valkyrie’s eyes connected for a moment, and a smile crossed Loki’s face for the first time in a while. Thor didn’t understand them.

“Mmhm,” Valkyrie hummed. Thor leaned in to them for an explanation, hands squared at his hips, but Loki just breezed a snip of a laugh as Valkyrie wiggled her brows too fast, a sort of suggestion of _something_.

“Go on,” Loki said with a flick of thin fingers on a tight hand, smirking in a way Thor knew was never good for him, “find your mortal.”

Thor was not in the habit of referring to Bruce, in any capacity, as ‘his mortal’ and he wanted to battle on Loki’s usage of it but both him and Valkyrie looked so smug he didn’t think it would do him much good. Thor sniffed a goodbye and turned towards the cafeteria.

Bruce was in the middle of conversation with a gaggle of kids when Thor found him. They were teaching him an Asgardian card game that was older than Thor. Bruce, everyone had discovered, was actually pretty good with kids when all his context wasn’t hanging around. Thor hesitated before stepping over.

He noticed, not for the first time he must admit, the true gentleness of Bruce Banner. It was an extreme counter to Hulk and all his brash moves, swings of fists and garishly loud outbursts at the wrong times. Bruce was contained and careful with every adjustment he made. Thor could see it right then, how he took his time as he slid cards to the members of his circle. Each movement started with a ducked head and a shared look, quick but practiced, a final check of consent, a caring concern, before Bruce enacted it. It was close to overwhelmingly sweet, if not worryingly so.

“These kids are whoppin’ my butt, Thor!” Two of the girls in the group giggled. Thor lowered himself around Bruce’s shoulders. Bruce adjusted and Thor caught a hint of a smile and a touch of a blush.

“Play this one.” Thor touched a card with the blunt edge of his nail and Bruce flipped it down onto the table. Someone issued a groan and Bruce gained a point. Thor removed himself from over him, catching the closeness. Bruce gave the win to the kids after the next round and Thor and him made their way back to the room.

“Give me like twenty, thirty minutes, and then _Weird Science_ , okay?” Bruce said as he pulled up all his tabs and his ever-growing paper. It was his plan to have the full paper done and ready for peer-review once they landed, as a sort of homecoming gift of well wishes to earth, a band aid for his long absence from academia. Bruce wouldn’t tell him directly, but Thor could feel the nerves and apprehensions boiling so clearly under Bruce’s skin when they talked about their destination. Thor was relieved the paper was, if not an actual solution, a nice distraction.

Thor flopped belly first onto the bed as Bruce got lost to his work. He appreciated their routine after meetings, work time for Bruce, then a Midgardian film, before they split again and he went to spar with Valkyrie or Korg or any warm, muscled body he found and Bruce dove scrunched-face first into the study of the science of matter in a void or something of the like. Thor, on most days, enjoyed the brief moments of sleep he could steal before Bruce woke him up for the next cinema classic he determined was on their required viewing list.

Thor managed fifteen minutes of a nap before he roused himself with a low groan and pulled two thick packets from his nightstand. He was supposed to have his new education system picked by the next morning, and the thought of that made him want to be swallowed up by the satin sheets under him so deep even Heimdall’s sight would be blind to him. Yet, still, he made a try to read the dense things. As Thor finally reached the bottom of page two, Bruce concluded his work session and turned over his shoulder to him. Thor’s eyes flicked up from his pages and gave Bruce one small scan.

He exuded, even in Sakaarian dressings, a very specific energy, the energy of someone who could be actively interested and spend ten straight hours of research on topics Thor fell asleep just hearing of. Frankly, Bruce Banner was a huge nerd.

“Okay, so this one is-” “

You must come to my meetings with me.”

“Ah, buddy, I don’t… that’s kind of an overst-” Bruce took a pace back to his screens.

“Yes! This is a brilliant solution! You shall come from now on, Bruce. It’s set.”

“Am I even allowed to be there? Like, isn’t it sort of an Asgardians only thing?” Bruce stumbled, wringing one finger around another.

“Korg’s there,” Thor supplied, seeing his idea, his salvation from the weight of a whole people on his shoulders slinking away as Bruce broke eye contact.

“Well, I-”

“I really want you there,” Thor pleaded. The corner of Bruce’s lips flicked up briefly, enough for Thor to count it as a win.

“I-maybe, okay, I’ll think about it. So am I, like, going as your . . . friend, or just a bystander, or . . . ?”

Thor puzzled on this. Bystander, a very inactive and unhelpful role, was not what Thor wanted. He had sort of pictured more of someone who would pretty much make all the choices for him. He beamed when he found the right word.

“Chancellor. You can be my chancellor. Will you?” Thor pulled his knees up under himself, growing giddy with the the idea of it and feeling his chest get a little lighter. Bruce’s eyes were wide and Thor couldn’t figure if they were going more towards bright surprise or intense shock.

“Ah, wow, that’s-Thor, thanks. That’s, um, chancellor sounds like a big deal, though,” Bruce said as he paced his way over to the bed with his careful tension.

“Well, yes, it is a bit, I suppose. You’d be my advisor and confidant for all matters. Every great king has had one,” Bruce was still unconvinced, hanging on the edge of sitting on the bed and avoiding Thor’s stare. Thor was beginning to feel a hint of desperation in himself, and he suddenly needed this more than he thought, “Bruce, please, I could really use this. And you are-I mean this quite truly-the smartest person I know.”

This seemed to be the secret charm for Bruce, as hearing it made his smile bloom into his cheeks, his bottom lip tucking up under his teeth in a way that reminded Thor of how full Bruce’s lips were.

“Well, I guess I . . . where do I start, then?” Bruce shrugged, not fully sure, but it was enough to get Thor to bound up like a spring to deliver Bruce the packets.

“Yes, yes, thank you, Bruce. You are a wonderful friend. Here, education system outlines. I’m supposed to have one picked by tomorrow.” Bruce’s brows spiked up and he shot Thor a look that was the exact halfway between the start of a laugh and the dip of a frown. He shook his head and opened up the first packet. Thor leaned over and tried to be subtle as he watched Bruce’s face scan the papers. Bruce had the paper close to his eyes as he picked at each line with his finger tracking along, the same look he got when he found a good source on cosmic ray collisions (and Thor actually knew what that meant, which, if anything, was a testament to Bruce’s passion). He seemed to be getting more out of it than Thor could have ever hoped to.

“You should go with this one, I think,” Bruce said as he handed a packet back over to Thor, “It has a really good curriculum already set for the younger kids and a lot of elective choices for the older ones. It will be good for entering the workforce.”

Thor blinked down at the paper, then back up at Bruce who was aflame with blush.

“You’re a genius.”

“Ah, ha, I don’t know about that-” Bruce’s lips went tight across his teeth and his face reddened even further.

“You are,” Thor affirmed. In terms of genius Avengers, Tony was usually the first one that people thought of, but Thor felt, especially over the course of these past few weeks spending majority of his time with Bruce, that he knew exactly who the real brain of the team was. Stark always seemed to understand this, too, if his little remarks about Bruce’s papers and the way he deferred to Bruce in their shared lab work were indicators. Bruce’s intelligence and how far it stretched amazed Thor to no ends, from the second they had met in New York. Bruce was stunned into silence and Thor admitted he was a bit pleased with himself that he was the one able to make sure Bruce was aware of his own brilliance. They were staring at each other now, stuck in that silence, and Thor felt a tingle of electricity mixed with something else slip down to his fingers.

There was an uneasy rumble from beneath their bed and as Thor started up to check on it, the ship jolted harshly to the right and he landed face first into the pillow. He pulled his head up to find Bruce tossed against the floor.

“Thor, y-you okay?” Bruce staggered as he peeled himself off the floor. Thor was quick to pull him back up.

“Let’s go,” Thor shot, and then they were on their way to the hull, bolting down as the ship rustled and tossed. Once they reached the front of the ship, Valkyrie, Heimdall, and Loki were already there. Outside the front window, rocks crashed about them, immense and jagged.

“What’s happening?” Thor asked the crowd.

“Asteroid field that wasn’t on our maps,” Heimdall informed. Another rock hit their left and Bruce fell into Thor’s side. Thor wrapped an arm around him to steady them both, and because Bruce was looking just a bit green at his corners.

“We need to-” Loki started, but he stumbled forward as they were slammed into from behind. A low growl bubbled out from the figure under his arm and Thor checked to find Bruce shaking whatever that was off him.

“Thor, you, ah, you gotta get me to the r-room, now, or I-I gotta-” Bruce’s sweat was sponging off onto Thor’s shoulder. Thor pulled his arms tighter around Bruce as he squirmed.

“I’m going to-uh . . .” Thor shot his eyes over to Loki, who upon seeing Bruce groaning, nodded fast and gestured them off. They had a hard time even staying balanced as Thor got them both back to the room. Bruce was lost from him at this point, half green and drifting further from himself with each tumble of the ground below.

“Bruce, hey, Bruce, let’s just-” Thor tried but Bruce had been good as gone since Thor had closed the door.

“Thor!” The word ripped out of the morphing body in front of him, breaking in the middle, shifting from Bruce’s squawk to Hulk’s howl. A green head tossed back with a roar and Thor was face to face with an eight foot mass focused only on him.

“Hulk, my friend,” Thor eased, with careful hands poised out in front of him as he tiptoed closer to Hulk.

“Hulk miss pretty god. Hulk come to see him.” Hulk pressed in towards Thor, that cocked up grin back again. Thor was washed over with guilt and he shut his eyes with a wince. The interaction started to feel like a betrayal and Thor fell back a few steps away from Hulk.

“You . . . you can’t just take over Bruce to see me. That’s not okay.” Thor remembered Bruce’s theory, the pendulum effect, and worry covered the pit of his gut as he considered a permanent loss of Bruce Banner. Hulk grunted, his brow folding into angry creases, and he punched a lamp off a counter.

“No, no, Hulk want Thor! Hulk come see him!” Hulk threw large fists onto the bed and a pillow bounced to the ground. As his arms continued to thrash about, Thor could see the trajectory of this freak out and while the ship rocketed them around, Thor rushed over to him to calm the storm.

“Okay, shh, shh now,” Thor murmured as he put a hand to Hulk’s chest. He felt the thunder of his heart simmer down to a rumble, and Hulk lowered to sit on the bed, green eyes softening when they found Thor in their line of sight. Warm breath gusted across Thor’s neck and they both inhaled together. Thor chanced a grin, “hey, sorry, we’re okay, alright. I missed you, too. I-just, is Banner going to be able to come back, uh, maybe, one day?”

Hulk frowned at the accusation and nodded. Thor sighed and the situation felt less hefty.

“Hulk let Banner come back tomorrow, okay? But Hulk and Thor first,” Hulk said in a near whisper, a voice Thor was hearing for the first time, and Thor’s breath caught when it hit him, soft and crackling like a hiss of a dying fire. It was a surprise to neither of them when Thor was pulled into the crevice between Hulk’s legs and their lips crashed like a spray of ocean into each other.

The guilt still covered Thor, but it was being eaten up by his excitement. He squeezed his thighs together in some last ditch attempt to stop him from falling down this hole again, but he had been thinking about Hulk’s cock inside him for two weeks and his member was like a dagger jabbing his leg. He was little more than a pulsing mass of flesh that hungered for the dark and full taste of Hulk, and Bruce’s well-being had slipped far, far, back in his mind.

“Unghh, fuck, Hulk, please, take me,” Thor groaned. He rutted himself against the point of Hulk’s knee. Hulk hissed and hummed, playing out a rhythm with his puffs of air into Thor’s hair.

“Thor go here,” Hulk moaned and Thor gave over to Hulk’s force as he moved into the V of Hulk’s legs. Hulk ripped off the bits of torn scraps of Bruce’s pants and Thor’s chest plummeted forward when he was level with the twitching of Hulk’s dick. The ship rattled him forward and his hand was on it.

“Ooh, I . . .” Thor didn’t finish whatever his train of thought was driving towards. He buckled at his waist and stretched his lips into a vice grip around the head of Hulk’s cock. It was pulling him too tight, tight enough that he fretted for the briefest moment his mouth might crack at the edges. But, he wouldn’t, he affirmed to himself, and in the heat of this, in the euphoria that was the challenge of Hulk, found he would allow himself to crack.

Hulk rocked his head back and forth across his shoulders and Thor tracked the motion, rolling his tongue over the slit of the head. Hulk shivered under Thor’s palms.

Thor had decided that this was what he wanted, constantly. He wanted his limits pushed while Hulk moaned and he rubbed himself raw. He wanted to be a whore for this cock, for all the parts of Hulk’s warm and muscled and strained and yet so, so sweet form. Thor dipped down further on the shaft, enhancing his moans to ridiculous proportions, because he needed it to reach Hulk and seep into his ears until his soul could feel Thor’s desperation.

They were animals here, stripped of their context and all of Thor’s problems and Bruce's anxiety and Hulk's danger, and they were just two creatures grinding against each other. They were base and primal, and that fact was making Thor delirious as he yanked on his cock. Hulk splattered in and across Thor, Thor following a moment or two after, and they both slipped back from each other.

Thor licked across his lips and sucked in Hulk’s seed. It was bitter at first but as Thor swallowed it down, it was sweet on his throat. He looked up under his lashes at Hulk, who was panting with a grin. They blinked at each other for a moment, and then Thor was hoisted up and over the rim of the bed to land upon Hulk’s wide barrelled chest. Thor rested his head down, wondering as he rattled in the bed  if he needed to get back to the hull and assist, but then, giving in, he shut his eyes, and he guessed they were cuddling. He liked it more than he would have expected to.

They didn’t bother with cleaning up after, as there was some satisfaction in staying sticky and soiled together. They slept in the blanket of their stench of sex, one of Thor’s more sound sleeps recently.

When he woke up to Bruce, he removed himself without a word, and when they saw each other in the meeting, when Thor saw Bruce’s gentle grin and tired eyes, last night was moot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I know RDJ is in Weird Science shhhhh he's just Tony's doppelgänger)
> 
> COMMENT
> 
> I am currently v sick so might be a delay on next chp


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO sorry for how long this took. I went from ear infection to cold to stomach flu one right after another and could hardly do more than lay in bed and watch Schitt's Creek. 
> 
> I will try to be more consistent with updates from now on.
> 
> But y'all, this shit is cute. Really cute. FLUFF WARNING 
> 
> Enjoy! 
> 
> (songs that I liked while writing this: Mine by Bazzi, Somethin Stupid by Frank Sinatra, Chelsea Dagger by the Fratellis and the ramblings of my own mind by me)

“That system is one of the most massive in the universe. Over thirty planets. You see how big the star is?” Thor said as Bruce leaned over to where his finger was pointing at. Bruce jotted down a scribble of something. 

“What’s the name? And, uh, um, what are our coordinates right now? Do you know that? Is it inhabited?” Bruce rambled, eyes darting in bright flashes between Thor, the twinkle of the Galbacus system, and his notepad. The side of Thor’s lips ticked up into a pleased smile, and gave all the details he could. 

Stargazing, though not as frequent an occurrence as their other rituals, was becoming part of their shared traditions. Bruce was the push behind every extended trip to the window. Thor had learned that his seven PhDs were in Nuclear Physics, Computer Science, Biochemistry, Radiobiology, Medicine, Particle Physics, and, apparently, Astronomy, which he had explained to Thor he had pursued due to his intense and undying love of the stars. Bruce approached space with a mix of the analytical and passion, coming in with a million questions of metrics as well as younger eyes than Thor had ever seen on him. Thor always tried to answer, to the best of his abilities, the questions that Bruce sped-spoke to him. He hoped that maybe one day this could go into another one of Bruce’s papers and he would have helped with that and done a service to Midgardian science as a whole, though, secretly, he knew, as he watched Bruce’s teeth tug in a corner of lip while he gave him the details of Galbacus’s fourth planet from its star, that he did not really love star charting for any educational purpose. 

“How do you know all this, by the way? All the systems?” Bruce asked. 

“Asgardian education is very broad, Bruce. I know much about astronomy, as well as other sciences.” Thor’s grin inched out further as a warmth spread under Bruce’s cheeks along with a steady glow permeating from under his irises. 

“Asgard has science? That’s . . . like, sorry this is kinda lame, but can you explain it to me, how that works? This sorta stuff is, well, my thing,” Bruce beamed and his mouth pulled open a smidge to show a glint of white teeth. He was genuinely excited about this, almost to the point of wonder, and the smile Bruce was sending his way, a real, true, indulgent smile, hit Thor in his core, melting that solid ball of grit inside him to some moldable mush.

“I, yes, I’m realizing that it is,” he replied. He went on, expanding on the manners of Asgardian science, the overlap of magic with the technical, and followed the motions of Bruce’s speedy fingers flicking around his notepad. 

He wrote with a fire that sprung from the tip of his pencil and resulted in half-readable scratches across his page. Note taking and research were the only times Bruce, outside of Hulk form, moved with speed. His hands, which were normally kept braced around each other at his midsection in a silent state of waiting, moves rare and planned, woke themselves when the notion of science floated by them. They ignited first, those hands, though the rest of the body always followed close behind, alive with the idea of gaining knowledge. Thor didn’t think he should be blamed for staring. 

Thor did stop his eyes from locking, though, when he caught himself stuck on the twitch of Bruce’s pinky as it tapped its own secret code on the notepad. Thor’s chest went hot, like an ember pushing its way through him from his back, and he had to actually shake himself to remove the tension of it. As he did, the hand which seemed to be causing the trouble moved up towards Bruce’s face and pressed against his temple.

“Agh, Christ, the big guy’s aggressive today.” 

Thor’s  _ everything _ fell, because Bruce had been saying that too often, because Thor knew why. 

“Oh,” Thor was plummeting. He could see Hulk, see all the pain and fury spiking right under Bruce’s eyes and he hated himself for it, “What does it feel like? With him, trying to get out?” 

Bruce dropped his hands down, connecting them together at his waist, and his mouth fell open at its center. His face became hard for Thor to interpret, changing too much too quickly, but Thor could see one thing for certain, two voices in one mind. 

“It’s . . . ah, sort of like. Um, brainfreeze?” Bruce tried, but shook that off, “No, not like that, actually. More like, I can hear this noise, this mumble or . . . fuzz sort of thing, at the back of my head. And sometimes, like, um, right now, it’s super loud and  . . . I, it’s hard to think, you know?” 

“I . . . yes,” Thor said through his teeth. He paused, eyes not on Bruce but down on himself and the toes of his boots, and then raised both hands up to the sides of his head. He shoved against himself till he felt static at the corners of his sight. This felt necessary, somewhat, an atonement for his sins against Bruce, to feel the pressure he inflicted, but he couldn’t get a good traction with his knuckles, and he was sure, just from the fight that radiated out from under Bruce’s skin, that whatever Thor was trying was nothing compared to that.

“Hey, geez, don’t do that,” Bruce’s hand covered one of Thor’s and slipped it down. Thor allowed himself one curl around Bruce’s pinky with his index finger and uncoiled it as soon as he saw Bruce’s eyes drift to it. 

“I . . . wanted to know how it felt for you.”

Bruce went into a wide eyed silence and took a pace away from Thor, left foot catching on his right. 

“No, you-you shouldn’t want that,” Bruce said to the floor and Thor’s shoulders squared around his ears. He was certain, that if he was making Bruce’s head shake with rumbles, that if Bruce couldn’t meet his eyes, he must be truly awful. 

“I-uh, Loki, I have to go meet Loki,” Thor shot at Bruce, turning as he spoke to the door and just missing seeing what Bruce’s eyes would have looked like when they returned to him. 

His lunch with Loki was actually not for another thirty minutes or so but he really couldn’t look at Bruce right now, and he was fairly certain his presence was giving Bruce crippling migraines, so he took himself over to the cafeteria, flicked dirt out from under his nails, and waited. 

“Why are you all twitchy, and stuff? What’s happening?” Loki settled across from Thor with a cup of something steaming. His brow was dipping into the skin of his eyelid as he scanned over the stretch of Thor, vaguely judgemental, as per usual.

“Ah, am I?” Thor checked himself. There was a tremble shimmying from his shoulder and through his thigh to his foot. He stopped, but the tension was still there, transmitting from his head in rolling waves as he thought about the situation he had screwed himself into. 

“Yes, you are. Is it the politics overwhelming your very blond head?” 

“No!” Thor replied, overly defensive, but, well, his head was a bit too blond for politics and he didn’t want to be reminded of the fact. He corrected his tone, “No, it is not-well, I do have a political query for you of sorts.”

“You can’t change your official title to Thor: King, Strongest Avenger, and National Asskicker,” Loki drawled, a smirk growing around his spoon as he ate his soup.

“Um, I am the only king so I think I can-wait, no, not what I was asking. I want you to be my foreign minister,” Thor whipped out a big grin on issuing on what he had hoped would be a joyous announcement. He was met with Loki’s smirk working away into a scathing frown. 

“You are truly an idiot.”

“Excuse me?” Thor balked. Loki tossed his head back with a pull of a grimace across his face.

“I will absolutely not be doing that.” Loki was starting to look near disgusted and it was making Thor wonder if he had somehow insulted him. Maybe foreign minister hadn’t been big enough. Probably that. 

“Now, I know foreign minister might not seem so grand, brother, but it’s perfect for you. All, ah, the cunning and strategy and being mean to other dignitaries,” Thor explained. Loki didn’t soften. 

“No one here on this ship wants me anywhere near government,” he huffed back. Thor pulled his lips taut and shook his head. 

“Uh, I do? Why aren’t you happy? You should be happy.” He sort of hated this act Loki put on of self pity, digging himself so firmly into the place of social pariah, which, well, maybe he was now after all he’d done. It was a chicken and egg deal with that, though, because Thor couldn’t remember when Loki was ever not whining about acceptance and lamenting his lot in life.

“I, wow, I can’t believe you’re actually this naive. You’re going to piss off all your councils, and, of course, Heimdall, if you make me  _ anything _ . I mean, for Odin’s sake, you’ve already elected the beast as-”

“Do not,” Thor bellowed, a determined finger swinging out and attracting the attention of a couple two tables behind them, “call Bruce a beast.” 

“Ah,” Loki said and his smirk returned with a fervor, like he had solved it. Thor groaned, because Loki had somehow turned this into a display of Thor’s complicated hang ups. 

“What would you do if, in a theoretical situation, you really enjoyed someone’s company very much, but your company caused them pain?” Thor asked after he had decided he had been manipulated. Loki stared for a long moment, vacant face, before he spoke. 

“Could you, theoretically, be caught for this?”

“Yes,” Thor answered, sweat brimming on the brink of his neck. He wasn’t sure exactly what the extent of Hulk and Bruce’s communication was, and his secret felt like it was wafting closer to the surface every day. 

“Then I’d leave them the fuck alone,” Loki said, and Thor deflated. 

Avoiding Bruce became easier as Thor went on with it. The ship had many areas to escape to, like the gym, that had bags and people to punch, the cafeteria, with meat to feast upon and people who were not Bruce to converse with, and occasionally, Loki’s quarters, which mostly resulted in both him and Thor becoming increasingly aggravated and was consequently low on Thor’s list of visiting spots. And though Bruce was up late most nights with his work on his paper, Thor could feign sleep well enough and their talking was minimalized. 

Thor didn’t know if he liked the ease with which he was able to avoid Bruce.

He couldn’t, however, avoid Bruce in the council meetings. Bruce, as direct chancellor to the king, was at every one of them, sitting right next to Thor over piles of haphazard notes. 

“No, no, we are going with Ariagana’s policy, not Haldier’s,” Bruce mumbled, only for Thor, slipping a page out from the others. Thor skimmed the lines on trade laws. 

“We want the one with . . . ah, more safety checks on imported goods.” His eyes wandered over Bruce’s way, who gave him a small nod. Thor warmed as a curl stumbled over onto Bruce forehead with the motion. He brought his mind back to the meeting.

Bruce was a mighty distraction, though. This was the only long stretch Thor allowed himself to have of Bruce and it was hard not to fall down the coiled trap of watching all the quirks and fidgets Bruce was prone to. At that moment, Thor was getting a side-eyed view of how Bruce looped his pencil over and under his fingers in idle seconds. This, he supposed, creepily observing his private movements and ministrations, would have to fill the gaps left by their star charting and movie marathons and late night talks. 

The meeting ended when a debate between two members of the agriculture committee got violent, where Thor decided with Bruce he was very clearly on Einar’s side. 

“Hey.” Bruce grabbed Thor in the rush of people exiting the meeting room. Thor couldn’t help but notice that Bruce’s eyes were ghosted with the dull gray of stress. 

“Hi, uh, hey, Banner,” Thor said, with an edge, with a border. Bruce’s lip ticked down, but he didn’t correct it, “Thanks for . . . you’re really good with the notes, thanks.”

“Course, bud,” Bruce said with a sigh and Thor could feel the sense of more underneath it. Despite himself, Thor didn’t leave. It had been four days without real conversation between the two. He had been craving. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Thor offered. Bruce lit up. 

“Sure.”

“With that film we watched, the one about the mean alien and the really badass lady warrior, is that cat okay in the end? I know the xenomorph doesn’t eat him but-” Bruce’s laugh bustled in and Thor’s brow bunched up, “What?”

“You are so precious,” Bruce said, face going soft in the edges of his mouth and the wrinkles of his eyes. Somewhere in between the muscles of Thor’s abs and his gut, a match was lit and as it sparked, his lungs burned. He took in two large gulps of air. 

Bruce broke the fuzz, though, as he groaned and pressed fingertips to his temple. Thor caught himself, and guilt dredged out the fire. 

“Have to go,” he shot before Bruce could say anymore. And Thor ran, fast, fast, fast. 

He landed in the gym by riding his foggy wave of remorse and worry. The punching bag in the far left of the room became his venting for his anger at himself and the sparks that glinted across him when Bruce’s lips split open across his teeth. As fists flew and Thor’s vision blurred, time sped and dragged in equal portions, and Thor wasn’t sure, when someone pulled him off the crumbling bag, if he had been there for thirty minutes or five hours.

“Shit, that bag owe you money?” Valkyrie asked as Thor stumbled away from the bag. He huffed at it, then looked back over to Valkyrie, who looked like a solution. 

“Spar with me?” he asked. Valkyrie’s mouth quirked up fast.

“Yeah,” she replied, followed closely by a fist zooming for Thor’s head. Thor ducked it and hooked Valkyrie’s waist until she was dipping with him. 

“You’re upsetting Bruce,” Valkyrie said from under Thor’s hold. Thor gave her a long look and a puff of a ‘huh’. Valkyrie took the moment to loop her thighs around Thor’s neck and tumble them both back. 

“How . . . do  . . . you know?” stumbled Thor. Valkyrie laughed, but with a sigh, loosened her legs. 

“He told me. Cause I talk to Bruce, unlike you, apparently?” she explained, and the legs fell. She leaned on her elbows on the rubber-ish mat below them, “Why is that?”

Thor flipped her forward as an objection to replying. She hissed out as her back slammed the floor with a might. Thor winced for her. 

“Sorry.” Thor looked away as Valkyrie rolled her eyes. She started up and took a run towards him. Thor tossed his arms up as a counter. 

“So what’s up?” Valkyrie asked around swings. 

“What’s what?”

“You and Bruce? Are you, like, obsessed, or something? Because you are very, very freaky about him, whether or not you’re flirting with him.”

“Flirting? I, no, no, you-” Thor staggered. His hands were antsy with the allegation and they found traction in careful placement on Valkyrie’s shoulder and hip. His leg got a hit in at her gut, “I-look, flirting, no, and obsession, no. I’m not. I don’t get obsessed, please. That’s below me.” 

“Ha! Okay, King, excuse me. Forgot how excellent and above us all you are,” Valkyrie said with an elbow to Thor’s chin. He took a stumble back, finishing it with a spit of whatever she had hit out of him. With a step forward and a toss of a fist, they were crashing blows again.

“Okay, so, well, I’m not saying I’m above you. I just, not obsessed. Bruce is-he . . . just, I just enjoy conversation with him because he is funny and a genius at Midgard science and has good Midgardian films to watch and listens to me and turns into a really cool green guy and makes jokes about things I don’t get but I’m trying to and-and . . . oh, oh. Oh.”

Thor was huffing hot air out into the room and on Valkyrie at that point, the fight only half to blame.

The air room in his head was being sucked out. He was dumb, very dumb. He was made a fool by Bruce in shirts that were too big, with his damned curls and wrinkles and smiles and olive skin. Thor didn’t know how he could only find this from pain and utter Bruce Banner starvation. Despite this, despite being a giant idiot who couldn’t even understand the workings of his own self, Thor felt a smile bubble up on his red face. He didn’t fully snap out of it when a foot knocked him in the chest and he fell to the floor. Instead, warm with electricity and blood rushing everywhere at once, Thor rolled his head up to Valkyrie.

“Oh Gods, I’m in love with Bruce.”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so if you're wondering why they watch so many 80's movies, Bruce Banner, if going based on Mark Ruffallo, should be like 48 or 49, so, a total 80's baby. He also loves Sixteen Candles, Queen, and the Cure.
> 
> COMMENT OR ILL SICK MY DOGS ON YA


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUESS WHO'S BACK, BACK AGAIN
> 
> KENNA'S BACK, and she's really sorry she has been gone for so long and she hopes her readers will still care about this story after like a month gap.
> 
> Seriously y'all I'm sorry. I just really lost motivation for this and I didn't want to publish something bad so I just wanted to wait until I felt like I could publish something I liked.
> 
> I'm . . . mostly happy with this. Enjoy!

Thor was on his back with eyes fuzzed up on the metal ceiling arching over head for an unreasonably long time. The realization of his love for Bruce was a shock to his system, maybe literally, he thought he might have sparked right at the moment the image of Bruce filled up his head and heart.

He didn’t know why, but he felt a wave of laughter stir up in his stomach and catapult out of him. He was in _love_. Bruce, with his too gentle fingertips poised and prepared, had reached into Thor and took a careful hold of his heart. He laughed again in two bursts, clutching his gut, still aching from Valkyrie’s slam to it. It had been too long since he had been in real, warm, hearty love. Thor had forgotten how rapturously joyful it was.

“Um, you getting up any time soon?” Valkyrie asked. Thor righted himself into a sitting position and shook out his shoulders. He gave Valkyrie his doopiest grin.

“I’m in love with Bruce,” Thor repeated. It was good to feel it on his tongue, Bruce’s name flexing across his lips and pricking a blush on his cheeks.

“Yeah, well. That’s nice.” Valkyrie stared at him from above, tone tight and unrevealing, but Thor could tell, with the edging up of her lips, that he was infecting her with his bubbling over smile.

“I-how did I not know sooner? Bruce is . . . he is the most tremendous mortal I’ve ever known. Did-has he told you about his work on black holes? It’s beautiful. He’s beautiful.”

The words were coming out without consideration, thoughts grabbing others and growing and sprouting bigger as they left Thor’s mouth.

“Does that mean you’re going to talk to him again?”

“Oh, I-”

Thor’s shoulders slumped and, like a wisp of air as he exhaled, the giddy fever he had been absorbed in phased out of him. Thor might have loved Bruce without complications in the sanctity of his head and the fog of this gym, but outside of these spaces, he had ignored Bruce for four days straight. Thor had slipped up and soiled their potential love before its start, betrayal ingrained in its roots the moment Thor had buckled to Hulk’s whims.

He didn’t think Valkyrie should know this.

“Ah, yes,” he replied, after a long gap in his own head, “I . . . I’ll be wooing him from now on.”

Valkyrie pushed a laugh out her nose and shook her head. Thor doubted himself just as much as she did. He couldn’t imagine pulling his old moves on Bruce, his demure and toying seduction, his waxing poetic to the point of meaninglessness, his flexing and fawning till his subject of affection was swooning into the crevices of the muscles of his arms. It never would have worked anyway, but especially not after Thor had fumbled so poorly. His methods had been foiled and his plan was fraught with flaws.

“Or, well, I don’t know, maybe not wooing, but I’ll talk to him,” Thor mumbled.

“You are a ridiculous king. Are you aware of that?” Valkyrie leaned in towards Thor, eyes squinted in a bit of a challenge, an invitation for another bout. Thor tried to take it as a distraction, but Bruce and Hulk and feelings for both were all formidable forces on his thoughts.

He excused himself away to his quarters to Valkyrie’s disgruntlement, and when Bruce was not there, decided to extend the avoidance for a bit longer, at least enough for a shower to settle himself.

Bruce, when Thor found him and when Thor felt mentally organized enough to handle conversation with him, was in the middle of a debate with the newly elected leader of his treasury. Thor appreciated Bruce’s dedication to his mostly undefined chancellor position even when Thor himself was being sort of an ass.

“Malfjor, Bruce,” Thor greeted with a nod to each. Malfjor was the one old, tried and true staple of the old Asgardian government in his parliament. He was huffy and red on the tip of his nose, which was his state often, a firm holdover of Odin’s rule.

“This Midgardian is telling me you’re moving my funding for the historical upkeep of ancient buildings to education?” Malfjor asked like the very notion of defunding was an atrocity. Thor’s eyes gave a momentary slip to Bruce, whose fingers were clutching onto one another as his face rattled between contained indignancy and a growing regret. Thor gave him a flick of the side of his lip turned away from Malfjor and Bruce’s lips spread into dimples, his shoulders releasing from around his ears.

“Well, yes, my chancellor is very well informed. The funding will be moved,” Thor said. He was mimicking Odin’s voice, or rather, what he remembered the voice sounding like when he was a boy and every political speech or decree made Odin look even more like the god he was. He let the tone move in to his shoulders and chest, puffing like a lion to his pride. Malfjor, easy to master, took the bait and settled just enough.

“I . . . if you think that best, King,” he grinded out of his teeth. Thor steadied his eyes onto him as the final step in his king performance.

“I do. I have the utmost confidence in Dr. Banner.” Thor smirked that bit out and, in the corner of his vision, he could see Bruce’s eyes go soft and happy, lids looking so comfortably heavy. Malfjor ruffled with a sigh and pushed off from both of them without so much as a goodbye.

“That was pretty fun, actually,” Thor said to Bruce under a twitching grin and heavy blush. Malfjor had lorded over him for so long as a quasi uncle who had been as distant and frigid to children as Odin was. It was cathartically cleansing, as were Bruce’s eye crinkles. “

Yeah, um,” Bruce, though still fuzzy in his eyes, had begun to chew up his lip. Thor frowned, “so, ah, you haven’t been talking to me, and that’s pretty weird.”

Thor’s cheeks went even warmer and he issued a laugh that stunk of guilt.

“Yeah, ah-”

“You know, the only people I know on this ship are you, Val, and Loki. And Loki and I sort of hate each other, so, it really sucks for me if we’re not talking.”

“I know,” Thor sighed. The pit of his stomach was empty and wanting looking at Bruce and, despite himself, he decided he could allow himself this, “I’ve been under stress and thinking poorly. I . . . it won’t . . .”

Thor halted. It had been immeasurably easier to talk to Bruce before Thor had realized the interconnection between the brewing of heat that cropped up in the middle of his chest and the batting of Bruce’s deep black lashes. He gulped in and composed himself as well as he could.

“Let’s go back to the room,” Thor said, catching the double entendre soon after he did. He hadn’t the time yet for deep consideration of Bruce in sexual terms, but giving it only a moment’s thought, well, he did want that, to grab Bruce’s hand in his own, rush them into the secret sanctuary of their room, and show Bruce exactly what a god can make him feel like, with masterful fingers on skin and confessions and secrets and primal needs whispered into his ear. Though, since Thor was still deep in the trenches of his Hulk/Bruce related guilt and couldn’t really think how he’d manage to present a request like that, those ideas would have to wait.

“Okay, sure. We are, like, three movies behind on our watch list, which I will not stand for,” Bruce breezed a laugh and Thor echoed too quickly and too loud, halfway to a yelp. Bruce pulled his face back as wrinkles folded between his brows, “Are all gods this odd, by the way, or is it a you thing? Cause, as an interested human, I’d like to know.”

Thor shrugged and his lips went lopsided. He pressed out a fit of giggles that resembled something like a schoolboy on drugs. He snapped his mouth shut after they were released, sucking in his lips to contain anymore ridiculously pathetic emissions, and walked chest forward to the room with a bemused Bruce trailing behind.

They put on a film Bruce told Thor was called _Dazed and Confused_. Thor was grateful for the noise and distraction and took it readily as a chance to figure out how he was supposed to continue on talking to Bruce without his mouth launching open and confessing all the small and large details of his heart. The movie was one of Thor’s more favorited, it turned out. The exploits of the wild cast stirred in him memories of the far too long gone warrior feasts after battle and holiday festivals that Thor adored and longed for again, though, this film contained a few less dead goats and sword fights than he was used too.

As one of the teachers in the movie harped on some freshman boys, Thor set out a deck of Asgardian cards, both desperate to occupy his hands and mind and determined to teach Bruce how to play this game properly.

“Here,” he muttered, issuing out a hand of seven cards to Bruce, “I’ll make a skilled cardsman out of you yet.”

Bruce snarked a chuckle and sent an ‘okay’ back Thor’s way. He flipped a card with an ethereal woman wrapped in leaves and branches down onto the metal floor between them. Thor groaned, mostly in jest as he found Bruce’s lack of skill sort of sweet, a reminder of his great amount of humanness, and handed the card back to Bruce.

“Very bad play.”

“What? Why?” Bruce brought the card up close to his eyes, as if the woman’s painted visage would tell him where he failed, “I needed to get rid of that card.”

“Yes, but you've given me the perfect chance to wipe my hand and win. Come on now, strategy, Bruce!” Thor’s hands clamped onto Bruce’s shoulders and rustled them as a sort of call to action, though, as Thor landed fully onto the firm ground of Bruce’s slumped shoulders and his palms tingled as they were flooded with energy, it came to his mind that it might have been too close to his Bruce related revelation to have physical touch. He yanked away as Bruce jolted.

“Ah, fuck, I just-”

“Sorry,” Thor grimaced.

“Control yourself, man,” Bruce chuckled, tossing his side against Thor’s. Thor beamed, which he promptly hid behind his cards.

“Well, play your card, then.” Thor’s voice was rigid, contained. He was overdoing it, he knew, but his body was lighting up and he could hardly hold back waves of extreme and likely terrifying love. Bruce slammed down a card, better this time, made Thor pause and consider his move, and Thor bristled with pride.

The movie thummed on in front of them. Thor’s eyebrows scrunched together as Slater lit up a rolled bit of paper.

“What is that? That Slater is doing?”

“Uh, smoking weed?” Bruce said. He put down three cards in one go. Thor grunted, good move. He stalled. Bruce grinned, lips tucked in on each other like a child with a toy. Thor really liked that, liked that too much.

“What’s that?” Thor asked. Bruce guffawed and Thor felt mildly insulted. Bruce stopped.

“Oh, yeah, you probably don’t have it on Asgard. It’s, um . . . do you know, like, drugs or medicinal herbs, something like that?”

Thor nodded. Herbs were fairly commonly used in both medical and recreational situations on Asgard. Earth shouldn’t differ too much. It clicked, then, and, given the rest of the movie, made sense.

“Oh, so sort of a . . .” Thor gestured out with a hand, a wave motion, and spacey expression, “perception altering, then?”

“Ahh, yeah, perception altering indeed,” Bruce mumbled with a grin on his breath.

“Do you use it?” Thor asked. Bruce’s eyes darted to the screen, red fluttering across his cheeks. Thor’s mouth shot into a smile on its own accord and he tucked it down as Bruce went more twitchy.

“Y-yeah, I do. More often since Hulk came into my life, cause, uh, the . . . weed helps, with the anxiety and anger and stuff,” he stopped himself and Thor gave him a moment as he worried his fingers at the back of his neck, “Is that, like, okay? I don’t know what the sort of, um, culture around recreational drugs is, or if you even have them, I-”

“No,” Thor cut him off, smiling. Many a late night had been spent in his youth with Asgard’s own take on ‘recreational’ drugs, “It’s fairly common on my world, too. Perhaps, when we land back on earth, you and I could partake in this weed together?” A breeze of a giggle simmered out of the corner of Bruce’s mouth and he nodded against his chest.

“Yeah, if you want.”

Thor’s cool burst at even the vaguest concept of sharing another experience with Bruce. He wanted weed if Bruce wanted it. He wanted to comprehend the intricacies of supernova death spirals and watch all the movies on Bruce’s list just so they could make another and find out the secrets that only he could know. All that Bruce was, Thor determined he would discover.

“So, when we land, you guys are going to see if you can find land in Norway, right?” Bruce asked. Thor frowned. Earth, which was coupled inseparably with the true weight of ruling and a wave of changes to follow, was something Thor was trying to place as far in the back of his mind as possible. Not to mention, Bruce following him to Norway didn’t seem to have much of a chance.

“Yes, we should draft a proposal for the Norwegian government soon. And you? Where will you go?” Bruce shrugged, eyes drifting back over to the screen, and Thor used the moment to wince his eyes shut. Bruce would probably go back to New York, secluded in his lab until he could forget Sakaar without the reminder of Thor. Maybe, if Thor was lucky, or unlucky he supposed, someone would try to blow up the world again and they would be forced into a reunion.

“I . . . dunno, I-maybe just back with Tony, if he’ll let me. I-I’m not sure where honestly. I don’t know if I have anywhere to go.” Thor’s brows shot up and then, as they fell, a well of sympathy filled in his chest.

“But, what about Romanoff? You and her were . . . lovers, yes? Maybe you could live with her. If she lives somewhere, I’m not sure.” Natasha hadn’t entered Thor’s head for a long time, but that was not to say Thor had forgotten her, especially not then. Midgardians were so hung up on relationships, on commitment and the who’s with who and men or women. A drip of anxiety tracked it’s way down his throat, chances dwindling.

“Oh.” Bruce slumped down against the bed, hand rubbing against his temple. Thor’s chest thumped. Oh faen, what if Bruce loved her?

“You two were together, right?” Thor tortured himself further.

“Well, ah . . . sort of? I-I don’t, we were something, yeah. But, it’s been two years. I’ve been gone. I . . . Nat’s moved on, I’m sure,” Bruce mumbled, going sickly around his eyes, “I can’t live with her, no.”

“Sorry,” Thor said, with a cautious dip of his shoulder to Bruce. Bruce leaned in a little to it. Thor sighed. His leg scooted over to Bruce’s, thighs pressed together.

“We were never serious. I thought maybe, just for a little bit, that we could have something and we were, like, gonna run away together, which was so dumb, but . . . I don’t think it was real. It was more like play dating or something.”

Thor nodded. Bruce’s head fell heavy onto Thor’s shoulder. Thor didn’t say a word, too tricky of a balance to test.

“Can . . . can I just come with you to Norway? I think I could be a really good political help and there’s a lab there where-”

“Yes!” It jumped out of Thor as an electric flush touched at the back of his neck. He laughed, catching the outburst and quieting himself, “You should come, that’s wonderful.”

“Okay, I’ll-awesome, I’ll come.”

Thor thought, if he could read auras, his would be reaching across the whole room. Briefly, Thor almost went for a kiss, because Bruce’s eyes were under folded lids scrunched into warm creases of irises and his full cheeks were resting under them. Thor stopped, though, on the edge of starting. Kissing then seemed ill-timed, too rushed, too rash.

As Bruce turned his eyes from Thor to his feet, a half grin on his face, Thor realized, with a start, that he hadn’t seen Hulk today. No pounding heads, no green tinted temples. Thor took it as a sign. He had to, he needed to actually, because Thor couldn’t do another four days without Bruce.

Let the wooing begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you comment, I'll dm you my favorite recipe for meatballs (they are dope y'all and I also have a vegetarian version)


	6. Chapter Six

Thor stumbled rather than jumped into his wooing of Bruce. It started in the cafeteria over a bowl of meat and rice.

“Hello,” Thor eased with a dance across his eyebrows as he settled across from Bruce. It had been a few days of building confidence and purviewing his methods before he had the strength to start, success a necessity. Bruce was a challenge, delicate to approach and easy to make crumble. So far, Thor was just edging in, choosing his words carefully.

“Hey,” Bruce mumbled, not glancing over. He was shoveling food into his mouth with a spoon in his left hand and holding up papers with his right. Thor flattered, shoulders drooping, and he cleared his throat, red faced. When Bruce looked over, he was less than gathered.

“So, ah-ha, um,” Thor squeaked out before quickly swallowing down his nerves. He had never  _ squeaked _ before. But, well, he never had to face up to Bruce’s hazel eyes and win before. He recomposed, with brows working into schmoozy expression and lips going all suave and plump, and tried again, “if I may say, Sir Banner, you are possessing all the majesty of a noble stag and the beauty of a growing leek.”

Bruce snorted out a laugh, covering up his stuffed mouth with a napkin. Thor deflated.

“Excuse me?” Bruce laughed. He was less than moved, brows in a scrunched wrinkle and lips in a muddled state between a frown and smile. Thor sucked down a lump of spit in his throat and shot his eyes to his knees.

“The . . . the stag,” Thor managed under reddening cheeks, “It is a regal and strong animal. And the leek, one of Asgards favorite crops. It’s a compliment.”

“Oh-okay? Is that, ah, one of your warrior things? To call a friend a stag? Also, the whole Sir Banner thing is a bit much, alright?”

“Of course. No sir usage anymore,” Thor conceded, though speaking was rough considering he was pretty sure his tongue just melted down into his boots with the rest of him. 

“Thanks.”

“So, I see you have the Norway draft proposal. How’s that?” Thor darted and Bruce gladly pounced on the lead. Thor used the time to sink into his sorrow.

Later, when he was back at his room alone and the muck of embarrassment fully dripped into all of him, Thor took a long moment to toss his head against his wall and lament. 

That line, the stag and all, had won him many a night with Asgardian men in the past. He had pulled the right face, too, said it at the right pace, let the words slip off his tongue like syrup. Yet here he remained, quite utterly Bruce-less. 

Briefly, he dreaded he had spoiled everything. Bruce seemed to be proving even more of a conundrum that planned for, and it really was Thor’s best line. He considered cutting his loses then and living like a miserly old spinster of king forever, but he squashed that thought. Bruce was not lost, and besides, he was Thor. He could seduce a mortal, even one as complex and unattainable as Bruce.

He wanted to recoup then and there, to attack again right away with a more aggressive strategy, but his body was still jelly and Bruce still felt much to lofty to ever obtain. Instead, Thor trudged to the gym.

When he arrived, Loki was stationed in a far corner, practicing with sheathed knives and a person shaped wooden target.  

“Brother,” Thor greeted meagerly. He tossed down sets of weights to the floor, relishing in the loud thunks they echo across the ground, the security of their heaviness and his ability to manage them. 

“Mad, aren’t we?” Loki drawled. Thor grunted, diving in on a one hundred pounder to start. He hadn’t the patience for mischief.

“Yes. So do not bother me any further.”

“No problem there,” Loki sighed, and when Thor glanced over, he was back on his knives. 

Thor heaved his arms up with his breath circling up in his chest as the weights were hoisted above his ears. There was a comfort to the heaviness, the reliability of his muscles and their strength, their solidness. He pumped his arms up and down a few more times in a rhythm with his huffed breaths until it was filling his head all the way up.         

Bruce, however, could not be kept from invading. Every time Thor told himself not to think about it, there Bruce was again, on the brink of a laugh at the pity of what Thor was. Thor slammed his eyes shut, letting the weight go rolling away with a crash. 

“It’s Bruce,” he muttered, undefined on whether he meant for Loki to hear or not. 

“What was that?” Loki asked, brow quirked. Thor let his eyes roll over to Loki belaguredly, who looked just too snarky for his taste. Loki smirked.

“So, you were saying something about Banner, I believe?” 

“Nevermind,” Thor grumbled. Loki’s eyes, which were too narrow and too cold, didn’t need to be privy to anything Bruce-related. 

“Oh, come on now. You’ve piqued my interest,” Loki said. Thor shook his head. He felt he should leave, anyways. His nerves were too pinched to work out, much less try at banter with Loki. Loki groaned. 

“You’re so dramatic, truly,” he huffed. Thor scooped his weights back up as Loki spoke. As he turned around to quip back a goodbye, his brother was gone and Bruce was at his shoulder. Thor scowled.

“Brother, you must-”

“Oh, geez, sorry,” Loki pushed, a bad approximation of Bruce’s voice, heavy on the Midwestern twang and overly folksy. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, tilting his head at Thor, “I didn’t mean to, like, upset you, or something. Should I, uh, get back to my lab and, uh, fiddle with my science toys and-”  

Thor reared up, body moving before his brain does, and chucked two of the heavier weights down at Loki’s feet. Loki’s form jolted back a few paces and Bruce’s image was gone. 

“Fuck!” he screeched. His eyes, red around the irises and tight, burned at Thor. Thor shrunk, tossing his hands up.

“Well! Sorry! I . . . I didn’t . . .fuck!” Thor paced the gym as he spoke, kicking about some of the weights, which felt crowding now.

“Control yourself, you massive ogre!” Loki shook out his shoulders, then fixed his hair back down into its slick slope down his shoulders. Thor looked him over before letting himself  sink to the ground. Head on one of his knees, palms tight against his thighs, Thor sighed.

“I used the stag line on him. It didn’t work,” he said through squished lips. Loki shook his head with half a laugh. 

“I know it’s one of your favorites, but, well, it is a bit trite at this point,” he said. Thor frowned up at him and Loki shrugged, “sorry.”

“I don’t think I can do this. Win Bruce,” Thor confessed, hushed. His hands lowered to wrap around his chest, fingers grasping into the fabric of his top. Bruce was his unclimbable mountain, first he had ever truly found, and he must face the gravity of that fact. He had failed. Loki huffed a laugh and Thor groaned. 

“Seriously?” Loki asked. Thor’s brows pulled up into each other. 

“Yes? I don’t . . . he’s beyond me, I can’t-”

“Oh, shut up,” Loki interjected and Thor gulped down his anger, “This show of pity is, frankly, egregiously pathetic. You are a  _ god _ . And Banner, despite what you think of him in your lovestruck mind, is just a man. You can win him, if you would just try to be a little less mopey.”

Thor rose from the floor, fists first, with a fire ready to burn Loki. Pitying, he would not have that thrown upon him. However, as he found the green in Loki’s eyes challenging him, pushing him to try  _ more,  _ work harder, go on, his clenched palms lowered. Thor was hit with the unsettling reality that Loki was correct.

“Okay, I . . . I’ll go at it again. Yes, yes, I will woo him again,”

Loki smirked, stepping towards Thor and placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Well, good. That was really annoying.” 

The continued, revitalized wooing started up almost immediately after Loki left him. Thor decided firstly that the thing to do was work up a sweat.

His body, he had to admit, was a tool he would have to be prepared to use. Women and men alike had let Thor know, very vocally, the appreciation they held for his body glistening with a sheen of perspiration and his muscles pounding with the strain of being pushed to extremes. It seemed to be generally accepted that his body after physical labor was a sight to behold and Bruce, brilliant and complex and advanced as he was, was only mortal. So, yes, Thor would use his body. 

When he got back to the room, Bruce was not there yet. Thor used the time to his advantage, undressing and wrapping the smallest towel they have around his waist. After which, he settled himself on the bed in a pose designed to seduce, his body sprawled out across the length of the foot of the mattress and head rested on crooked on arm so his chest laid out like a presentation. 

As Bruce walked in. his eyes caught on Thor’s body, and he stumbled in his steps. Thor was indulgently pleased.

“Hello there, Bruce.” He grinned, shifting so the towel falls, just a little, enough to hint. 

“Uhhhh,” Bruce stuttered with a flush splashing all of his face, “are y-you about to shower, or uh, something?”

“In a moment,” Thor said, long and slow and savouringly. He brought himself to his feet and pulled towards Bruce. Up close, he could see the full success of his methods, Bruce’s fingers drumming over his palm in a disjunct beat, the rapid, jittery jutting of his tongue to lick his dry lips, his eyes that can only look at Thor in brief, careful moments.

“O-okay,” Bruce replied, with his eye now somewhere near the bay window. Thor chuckled from deep in his chest. He could see Bruce swooning to him within the hour. 

“I’ve just finished working out. Sit ups, runs, benching around 1500 lbs. Is that . . . average on Earth?” 

“No, ah, not quite. I think my max is like 70, ha, um . . .” Bruce trailed, and then, hesitantly, let his eyes find Thor’s for more than half of a second. There was a hunger behind his eyes, black pupils eating up brown. It’s the only time Thor had ever seen Hulk’s attributes on Bruce, the rawness of his other half emerging as he studied Thor. Thor was shaken, his grasp loosening, and his towel slipped for the briefest moments. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled as he caught the towel and resettled it, but he’d already lost Bruce, who is back to deer in the headlights. 

“Um, so, I-I think Val said she . . . needed my help with ah, ah, science stuff. Um, yeah, so, bye!” Bruce shot, and then darted out the door, metal clanging back together after he was gone. Thor ran a heavy hand across his face.

Mission: mostly unsuccessful. 

However, those eyes . . . 

Thor did actually find himself in the shower after that. Ragged over Bruce, gooey over his eyes and his face and his hair, and wrecked from the hint of Hulk. Under the sound of running water, Thor palmed himself with a desperate longing, pumping into his fist for only a few minutes until he released himself upon the wall. 

Thor exited the shower spent and weak in his legs. Everytime his eyes shut, they would be there again, those eyes, brown and dark and deep and staring at him too hard, looking into too deep. They must’ve robbed Thor of something, he’s sure, taken a part of his life force. He doesn’t know how else to explain this exhaustion. 

After the shower, Thor threw himself upon the bed, clothed in loose clothes. His flaunting had overwhelmed Bruce, so he decided to venture to the other extreme, as unsexual as possible. His fingers drew through his hair. The short spikes of his nonconsensual cut were starting to grow out, dripping wet strands falling over his forehead. Sakkaar was leaving him, as was Asgard, as was what he knew his life to be, possibly as was Bruce. 

No, no, no, Thor stopped himself, no more self pity. He jolted up, spine straight, and roamed the room with the intent to find a piece of paper and a writing utensil. 

After he found his supplies-which were, not surprisingly, in the desk-he started in on his letter to Bruce. 

All other things failing him, Thor could hope to rely on the simple truth of words that he had studied in his childhood. 

_ Bruce, _

_ I would like to first begin with some apologies. I am sorry for the confusion I have caused you these past weeks. I have first severed our communication without reason, then resumed it only to startle you with compliments and overwhelm you with the full expanse of my body. I do not mean to excuse these actions away, but, however, I do feel I must offer the true reason behind them: my love for you. _

_ Bruce, oh fair and wondrous Bruce. Finding you on Sakkaar has been nothing short of a blessing. I did not know until I saw you again how I had felt the absence of you in the two years prior. You, with all you are, with your curls which I have grown to worship, your soft voice which could draw me out of even my deepest sorrows, and mostly, your unimaginable, multitudinous intelligence, have set alight a spark within myself. This spark has flickered and flamed into a true fire, which I must admit, I cannot quel. Bruce, I am in love with you. _

_ I do not ask anything of you, only that you know this information to be true. I love you, I adore you, I want you, and I hope you can return these desires.  _

_ However, there is something we must discuss _

_ Bruce, I must admit that Hulk and I- _

Thor’s pencil rolled out of his grasp. The fervor with which he had been pouring everything he felt out upon the page simmered out. Hulk. The massive green roadblock in his love of Bruce. Or, no, not roadblock. That was wrong, not true to how Thor felt about his beheamouth friend. Hulk could not be simply pushed aside. The pounding of Thor’s heart as thought again about the touch of Hulk’s calloused palm to his chest was assured of that. 

Thor pushed back away from the desk, staring down at his letter. Unusable, unfit now that he considered Hulk. He ran a palm across his face, groaning. 

Behind him, the metal door clanged open. Thor jolted, his hands springing out to the letter, and he jammed it into a crevice of the desk. 

“Hel-” Thor’s words were cut off when he turned to see Hulk, brow furrowed and upper lip a nasty snarl, standing in the door. 

“Hulk mad!” Hulk bellowed. Thor rose slowly in response, hands moving in careful motions to his sides.

“Uh, yes, yes, I see that. Did-did you walk all through the ship to get here?” Hulk nodded with a gruff shake. Thor gulped, “Okay, give me a moment, then, okay?” 

Slipping his way around Hulk in side steps, Thor stuck his head out into the hallway. A mother was clutching her son to her tight in the doorway across from them, a elderly woman giving Thor a stern glare that made him avert his eyes, and more discombobulated people lined down the rest of the hall. 

“Sorry,” Thor hushed to the crowd, “Uh, I’ll keep him in check in the room.” 

After some nods and angered huffs, Thor pulled himself back into the room. 

The room was already victim to Hulk’s whims of anger, pillows tossed to the window and against the bathroom door and the desk’s clutter scattered. 

“Oh, Hulk . . .” Thor sighed. Hulk turned from his work on tearing up papers to shoot Thor a look, brows snarled up into a nasty grimace and nose pulled into his tight wrinkles.

“Thor no like Hulk anymore!” 

“Hulk,” Thor deflated, seeing only then how weak Hulk’s anger was once he could look into his eyes, wet in their corners and hopeless, “not true. Not true at all.”

The truth was Thor did like Hulk, liked his body and his touch, and his passion, liked it all a little too much. He’d confess to it though, let loose his secrets, if to stop Hulk from looking so broken down. 

“Two weeks! Hulk don’t see Thor for two weeks!” 

Thor nodded, stepping back. He hadn’t been tracking the time, quite lost in Bruce. He brought his head back up. Hulk was leveling off, but his eyes were trained on Thor, still heavy with heartbreak.

“Thor like Banner.”

“Oh.” Thor flushed across his nose. 

“True?” Hulk checked and Thor had to gulp down his nerves to answer. More than like, that was certain. His gut starts bubbling with guilt over his ignorance, that he never thought of Hulk’s feelings, barely considered him as a being of emotions. Thor was truly the fool he had been touted as.

“Yes,” Thor confessed.

Hulk groaned, then roared, a half roar, rasped without much behind it, then finally, flopped to the ground on his ass. 

“Why?” Hulk said to the ground, his knees blocking his face. Thor slumped back against the bed, huffing a breath.

“Well, um,” Thor considered. He wants a balance between the truth and gentleness to Hulk’s heart, but the middle was hard to find. He sighs, “He’s very sweet, and he has nice hair, um, I suppose, and a good smile, and . . .”

Hulk nodded as Thor trailed and Thor took the cue to shut up. He gave a weak smile, trying to soften things.

“I like you, too,” Thor assured.

“True?” Hulk asked once again. His head raised to catch stares with Thor. His eyes knocked Thor off his balance. While Thor rarely saw Hulk in Bruce, Bruce in Hulk was even more uncommon. But, Hulk’s eyes were disarmingly soft, a gentle entremeant of Thor, dipping in at their corners. Like Bruce’s. 

“Yes, of course I do. You’re strong, and passionate, and surprisingly gentle when you wish to be, and of course an excellent lover. You are such a great friend, and battle partner, and I really, really do like you, Hulk.”

Thor’s feet started on their way to Hulk, like a magnetic pull was on them, and he landed himself in front of that warm face and those lovely eyes. He placed a hand on Hulk’s stubbled cheek. Hulk gave him his toothy grin. 

“Good. Hulk like Thor. Very much.” 

Hulk’s cheeks looked down right adorable when he smiled. They dimpled just like Bruce’s. Thor should have noticed the similarities earlier. It’s no wonder he had fallen in with them. Both of them. He loved both. His heart started to beat faster. 

“I love Bruce,” Thor started and Hulk pulled an awful frown. Thor corrected, “and you. I love you so much. Both of you. Is that alright?”

“Thor . . . Thor love both?”

“Y-yes.” Hulk had already pulled his face away from Thor’s palm and Thor could see his downfall before his eyes. Losing both his loves in one go seemed terribly awful.

“Thor make sure he see Hulk?”

“Yes, yes, a lot more,” Thor promised. 

“And Thor . . . Thor make . . . Banner happy?” 

Thor’s whole insides melted down to a bubbly goo of affection. He loved both of them so immeasurably much. As a unit, as seperate parts, despite and for each other. 

“Yes, I will make him as happy as I can.” 


	7. Chapter 7

It should have been illegal for Bruce to show up to official meetings looking as good as he did. Because Thor couldn’t focus.

The meeting was the last major one of the voyage, as they were around three or so days from landing in Norway, a reality Thor was accepting bit by bit, completely terrified. It was a final swearing in of the  leader of the warrior force and foreign minister , Valkyrie and, miraculously, Loki respectively. 

“ _I promise to uphold the aims of the Asgardian people, to work dutifully to the best of my abilities for their best interests, to-_ ” Valkyrie and Loki uttered in unison. 

Normally, as in on real and true Asgardian soil, this ceremony would have been held in the golden parliamentary room, with its high ceilings and intricate portraits of the wise men and women who came before, and the people being sworn in would give their vows with palms on a three thousand year old holy book. Though, here, they had settled for the biggest meeting room they could find and a stapled together version of the book on plain printer paper. Thor was still equally proud to see his brother give his oath.

As the crowded mass of political figures fell into applause when Heimdahl officially named their titles, Thor let his eyes sneak over to Bruce in distraction. His curls were more careful today, probably in reverence of such an important meeting, but they were just waiting to jump out his gelled style, Thor was sure of it, ready to fall across his face, little brown ringlets touched lightly with grey, so Bruce would have to use his gentle fingers to tuck them away. Under Thor’s eyes, one did fall, a curl at his forehead, and Thor’s breath caught warm in his chest as Bruce swooped it up between his pointer and middle fingers. Oh faen, Thor wanted him. 

Thor did, of course, despite his wants, not take Bruce on the table right in front of his parliament. Firstly, that would likely have been a gross breach of manners for a king, and secondly, he had sworn to himself that he could not go any further in his romancing of Bruce without confessing about Hulk. Secondly, it would have probably been just slightly inappropriate for a political meeting, maybe. 

“Well,” Loki sighed, pulling back towards the wall as the crowd thrummed out around him, “I guess  _ that _ happened. Miraculously.”

“Brother!” Thor cheered, clapping a hand on each of Loki’s shoulders and shaking them out thoroughly. Loki jeered, though it was half-hearted and covering a smirk.

“Did you see Heimdall? Glaring daggers at me,” Loki said.

“Oh, shut up about it,” Valkyrie said, her chin jutted out and upon Thor’s shoulder. Loki scrunched his nose at her as Thor turned too fast and she stumbled.

“And you! Look at you, mighty, mighty warrior!”

Valkyrie huffed a laugh, rolling her eyes, and shoved herself against him. 

“I am so very proud of the two of you,” Thor told them with his hands braced at his hips. Earnestly, he really was quite proud of them, but, more than that, relieved. The task of governing a nation, nay, a world’s worth of people, was immeasurably less daunting knowing he had two people who he knew were more competent than him on board. 

“Congrats you two!” Bruce grinned as he slipped in by Thor’s side. He hugged Val earnestly and offered Loki a polite nod, before gliding his stare up to Thor. His eyes were soft, as they always were, melting and gentle brown, but they were hot, too, looking deep at Thor and entreating him to look right back. Thor’s lip twitched up into a nervous smile.

He was going to tell Bruce, tell him as soon as was viable. Pull him aside to some confined room and pour out all he’d been hiding. He had too, because he had to confess before he could have Bruce, and faen, fuck it all, he wanted Bruce. And Hulk. As soon as possible. Now, now, now, Thor repeated in his head until it pounded.

“I-I . . . I have to go!” The words spewed out with Thor’s breath. All parties present gave him a stare, all middling between confusion and sarcastic amusement. Startled into movement, Thor found himself darting away to the gym, for his best bet at safety on this ship.

Thor, as he was generally wont to do in these situations, spent the better part of a half an hour slamming with a god’s force into a punching bag. Screw all of this damn guilt, screw people’s looks, but above all, screw all his own poor choices. He had to tell Bruce, the very next moment he saw him. 

“Hey,” a voice said over his left side. Thor jolted, his fist flying out gutturally and breaking the already ripping seams of his bag. The cotton-like stuffing spilled at his feet and Bruce mumbled a small ‘oh’ at it. Maybe not the  _very_ next moment.

“Sorry,” Thor grunted and Bruce shrugged.

“Nah, um, you were in the zone. Shouldn’t have interrupted. Well, I just came to check in, cause . . . you know,” Bruce teetered off, shrugging, and Thor flushed, “you darted. As you seem to be a fan of doing, mostly around me.”

“Uhhh,” Thor drawled. He supposed he did, but the soft, brow scrunched accusation from Bruce was too much for him. He sighed, nodding to it, “Yes, I do that, most unfortunately. I’ll try to stop that.”

Bruce looked at Thor from under his brows and Thor squirmed at it.

“And this time I mean it.”

“Good!” Bruce said legitimately, “If that’s settled, I was thinking we could go back to the room.”

Thor licked his lips, which were drying as everything inside him caught. Oh, yes please.

“Yes, yes, definitely.” 

In the room, Bruce busied himself immediately with the holographic screens.

“I know we’ve gotten a lot done in terms of your cinematic education, but I think your musical could use some work,” Bruce said over his shoulder.

“Oh?” Thor couldn’t help but agree, as he was ready and willing to learn anything Bruce was the teacher of, and musically, he quite possibly did need some help. Loki had always told him he was a wretched singer.

“Yep! Let’s start with . . .” Bruce fumbled with the screen for a moment, front teeth slipping over his bottom lip, which was quirking into a grin. A riff began to play from the speakers around them, “Queen.”

“Which queen?” Thor asked and Bruce snorted, moving closer to him.

“Not a Queen,  _ Queen.  _ Ya know?” Bruce checked and Thor shook his head, hoping against hope his ignorance would allow for a closer tutoring, “Freddie Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody? C’mon!”

“I’m sorry, Bruce, I have not heard this queen.” Thor glinted a smirk at Bruce, who rolled his eyes indulgently.

“Oh, just get up and dance with me!” Bruce begged, though he faltered once the words were out, staining crimson and falling down the back track of mumbling, "Uh, I mean, I . . ."

Thor grabbed his hand, cautious not to zap, and caught him before he could run.

“Gladly.”

Bruce explained the song,  _ I Want to Break Free _ , was a personal favorite for him, remembrances of it from childhood and playing it whenever he felt overwhelmed. He still had the lyrics memorized, which he showed to Thor.

“God knows, God knows I want to break free,” Bruce screech-sung up to Thor. Their hands were linked, both of them now, and Bruce was guiding Thor in a sort of shimmy, arms pulling back and forth between the two of them. Thor needed him closer. 

The next chorus started with  _ I’ve fallen in love _ , and faen Thor had, so he moved then. Dropping one of Bruce’s palms, he spun him out to a bit of a dip and caught him against the barrel of his chest. 

“Jesus,” Bruce chuckled, still slanted in the cradle of Thor’s arm. Thor chuckled too, in bursts, light and testing. They stared at each other, unbreaking in their line of focus, and Thor knew. He could feel the heat of Bruce’s passion steaming off him, maybe Hulk’s passion, too, from deep inside, fighting it’s way up to tell Thor, kiss me, goddamn it.

_ I can’t get over the way you love me like you do  _

Thor did it. He pounded down with eyes falling shut and kissed Bruce. Bruce let him in before their lips were even fully together, and Thor felt his anticipation sighing away as his tongue broke the barrier of Bruce’s mouth. He was so hot inside himself, hot outside, brimming everywhere with warm desire and eager submission to the kiss. 

Bruce’s hand crawled up under Thor’s tunic, grasping at a meaty section of pec. Thor moaned, because it was what he wanted, because it was better than that. He was melting deep into the hold of Bruce’s embrace, both melting into one. But, with one thought, Thor reconstituted.  _ Tell him the truth. _

Thor slipped just off Bruce’s lips and they both took in the air they had been lacking. Bruce’s brows folded into each other and his eyes clouded with a quiet upset, fingers ringing around a section of fabric on Thor’s tunic.

“What? I . . .”

“We need to talk,” Thor said. Bruce’s mouth hung open for a brief moment, before he straightened himself up and out of Thor’s arms with a half chuckle.

“Ah, I-okay.”

They settled themselves at the foot of the bed, Bruce ringing his soft palms with his fingers. He was flushed on the tip of his nose and, as Thor’s hand rose up to his cheeks, he felt heat off his own face too. 

“So . . .” Bruce pushed a laugh again, warm and full, and Thor couldn’t help but grin, “that was, um, wow, ahaha, that was a good kiss.”

Thor nodded and let himself run two fingers across his still wet lips. They were puffed and reddened from Bruce’s attention. Briefly, he stopped to enjoy this. To stare at Bruce, who was alight with grins. To even his breathing, which was still trying to catch up with him. To realize that he had kissed Bruce and Bruce had kissed him back. It was a damn good kiss. 

“I wasn’t sure if you had those feelings for me, Bruce,” Thor said and Bruce stuttered a laugh. 

“Wasn’t sure if I . . . really?!? Thor, you’re literally a god! And I mean, surprisingly sweet, and funny, and kind of a dork, but so hot, and I . . . oh my God, I need to stop,” Bruce stumbled off and Thor went fiery with blush, “um, anyways, great kiss. What did you want to talk about it?”

“Oh,” Thor replied, a cold sweat passing over him as guilt lurched all the way through him, “Well, it’s about Hulk.”

“Look, if this is going to be a rejection or something, I get it. I’m used to people freaking out about Hulk and I-”

“No, no, that’s not . . . I’m not rejecting you. I really like you. I think you are the most wonderful person, Bruce,” Thor assured. Bruce’s frown faded into a giddy smile.

“Fuck. Well, that’s good,” Bruce grinned down to his lap. Thor’s breath caught, trying to hold onto that smile for just a moment longer.

“Look the thing about Hulk is . . . is, uh, that I’ve been sleeping with him.”

“What?” Bruce laughed, though it died as soon as he saw Thor was unmoving, “like, in the same bed, or, ah?”

“Sexually, I-I, I mean sexually. We have been having intercourse, yes.”

Bruce sucked in a large puff of air, which he did not release, and his eyes went painfully large. He stared at his feet for a long moment, in which Thor could feel the beads of sweat trekking down his clammy back, before jolting up in a stiff movement off the bed. 

“Oh my God, you, fuck! How could you-you just, sleep with him? Oh my God, oh my God, that is so . . . so disgusting!”

“Bruce,” Thor muttered, sloping his head into a hand. Bruce continued to pace in front of him with no end of it in sight.

“Not to mention, like, like, a total invasion of my-his, o-our bodies! And-and did we even consent? Huh? Did he consent?”

“Yes,” Thor said to his hand, away from Bruce’s glare, which was burning with an oh-so-confusing level of Hulk, “He did give consent. He-Hulk, um, initiated most of the time.”

Bruce froze in his war path. Oh, faen, Thor screwed himself, and he was going to lose Bruce, and he was an idiot, and someone should have just shot him into space right then. Bruce jerked his head to Thor, who shrunk.

“How many times did you sleep with him?” Bruce asked, rough with grit. Thor went silent, bubbling with heat under Bruce’s glare. 

“Three or four times, give or take,” he confessed.

“I can’t.” Bruce delivered one final cutting, stabbing right into the gut look at Thor, before he slammed his palm down onto the button by the door, letting himself out. And, with that, he was gone. Thor was alone.


End file.
